Archaeologists have discovered 12,000-year-old engravings carved by ancient Britons in a cave in Creswell Crags, Derbyshire. The depiction of the animals - which include a pair of birds - is the first example of prehistoric cave art in Britain.

The discovery - by Paul Bahn and Paul Pettitt, with Spanish colleague Sergio Ripoll - is set to trigger considerable scientific excitement, for it fills a major gap in the country's archeological record.

'If this is verified, it represents a wonderful discovery,' said Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, London. 'There are fine examples of cave art in Spain and France but none has been found here - until now.'

Modern humans appeared in Europe 45,000 years ago and quickly replaced the continent's occupants, the Neanderthals. One of the settlers' first acts was to create works of art, something no previous human species is believed to have done. The best preserved of these works are the galloping horses and charging rhinos painted on cave walls at Lascaux and Chauvet in France and at Altamira in Spain.

But none has been found in Britain, probably because our climate has destroyed them, even though the British Isles were linked to the continent around this time, and the country was inhabited. Indeed, the hunt for ancient British cave art has been littered with embarrassing false leads. In 1918, archaeologists announced that a series of red stripes painted on a coastal cave in Wales was a prehistoric painting. Only later, when the stripes started to fade, was it realised they had probably been created by a sailor cleaning his paint brush.

But now archaeologists believe they have discovered the real thing. As the team reveal in the journal Antiquity, they targeted Creswell Crags because its caves are known to have been occupied in palaeolithic times. In the nineteenth century, archaeologists discovered a 12,000-year-old bone needle in a cave called Church Hole.

And it is in this cave that Bahn and Pettitt discovered the two engravings, both of a style similar to the cave art of France and Spain.

Of the two birds carved on the wall of Church Hole, one appears to be a crane or swan, the other a bird of prey. The other engraving is probably of an ibex, an animal not thought to have existed in Britain. The engraving may represent a rare sighting of an ibex that had strayed from south-west Europe.

The team discount the possibility that the engravings are forgeries because they are caked in calcite, indicating an ancient origin. Graffiti, dating to 1948, now covers them.

As to the function of the engravings, most experts believe they played a key role in strengthening tribal bonds. On reaching adolescence, youngsters would have been brought into caves lined with paintings of animals and lit with flickering candles and oil lamps.

Accompanied by chanting and drumming from priests, the experience would have been etched in the young minds, cementing them to the life of their tribe.